By Hank Beckman –
In April I posted about a DePaul University publication that described an unrepentant terrorist, Oscar Lopez Rivera, as a legitimate political prisoner, as if the gang to which he was a member, the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN, was the moral equivalent of Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
If you think this was an isolated incident, an anomaly in the culture of the modern American university, you might be in for a rude awakening.
Various institutions of higher learning, some quite prestigious, have exhibited no reluctance in hiring former criminals guilty of offenses ranging from burglary to bombings to felony murder—as long as they are politically left-wing.
Chicago-area universities were home to two of the most notorious sixties-era radicals, husband and wife Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
Ayers was raised in suburban comfort in Glen Ellyn, the son of the CEO of Commonwealth Edison. He became radicalized as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, originally protesting racism and social injustice.
Frustrated with the apparent inability of a community of spoiled brats to convince the nation to abandon its commitment to the war in Viet Nam, Ayers decided that the situation called for “direct action.” Or as the rest of us call it, terrorism.
As he freely admits in his autobiography, Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Ayers participated in several bombings, including attempts at the U.S. Capital, the Pentagon, and the New York Police Department. He always points out that no one was killed in the bombings, but that was due to plain dumb luck.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the day terrorists killed almost 3,000 Americans, Ayers was the subject of a New York Time article.
“I don’t regret setting bombs,” he was quoted as saying. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”
You’d think that after that work history, he would be lucky to get hired for third-shift security at Walmart.
But he later earned a doctorate from Columbia University and became a respected academic, a professor of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. (His academic writings may be more scandalous than his criminal career, but that’s another column)
His wife’s record is no better.
Dohrn, daughter of an upper middle class family from Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, became radicalized at the University of Chicago, where she earned her undergraduate and law degrees.
She later became a member of the ultra-violent Weather Underground and signatory of the group’s 1969 “Declaration of a State of War,” on the United States Government.
After the Weather Underground became increasingly violent, Dohrn was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List, prompting her to go underground with Ayers, the man who became her husband.
Because of legal violations by the FBI in gathering evidence against Dohrn, all Weatherman-related charges were dropped.
But she did have to serve almost a year in prison for refusing to testify against Kathy Boudin in Boudin’s trial for her role in the 1981 robbing of a Brink’s Armored Truck that resulted in the deaths of two policemen and an armed guard.
As notorious as she may be for her radical activities, Dohrn may be best known for comments made about the murders of actress Sharon Tate and her friends by the Manson family.
At the Weatherman’s “war council” in 1969, she was quoted as saying “First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they even shoved a fork in the pig Tate’s stomach! Wild!”
This living, breathing embodiment of warmth and charm later became a law professor at Northwestern University.
Speaking of Kathy Boudin, another proud member of the Weather Underground, she spent almost 30 years in prison for her role in the Brink’s robbery that resulted in the death of Waverly Brown, Nyack, New York’s first African American police officer.
After members of the Black Liberation Army hijacked the Brink’s armored truck and killed Brink’s guard Peter Paige, the thugs were stopped by the police in their getaway van and ordered to come out and drop their weapons.
Witnesses identified Boudin as the person who exited the vehicle with her hands up, distracting the officers, who relaxed, thinking they might have the wrong vehicle.
Then Boudin’s partners in crime came out of the vehicle with guns blazing, killing Waverly Brown instantly; his partner, Sgt. Edward O’Grady, died later in the hospital.
Sentenced to 20 years to life for her role in the murders, she was granted parole in 2003 and eventually began a new career as—you guessed it—a university professor. To this day, she is an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University.
Then there’s Susan Rosenberg, convicted for, among other things, conspiracy to possess unregistered firearms, conspiracy to receive firearms while a fugitive, and carrying explosives during the commission of a felony.
Rosenberg was also suspected in being involved in the fatal Brink’s robbery and of helping to help the radical Assata Shakur escape from prison.
She was never charged with the latter two offenses, but wound up earning a 58-year prison sentence for the other charges and stayed in prison until President Clinton commuted her sentence on the last day of his presidency in 2001.
She later had the unmitigated gall to title her autobiography, An American Radical: A Political Prisoner in My Own Country.
Rosenberg found work as a teacher at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Hamilton College, but at least those institutions had the good sense to respond to political pressure and end their relationships with Rosenberg. But they still voluntarily began an association with her.
Sixties-era radicals have dominated higher education in this country for years. That should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually been on a campus in recent decades, or had the pleasure of being reintroduced to one of their freshly-indoctrinated children home for their first holiday break.
But you would think that being a left-wing radical that actually participated in bombings and murder would disqualify someone from a position in one of our nation’s institutions of higher learning. Apparently not.
Think about the type of environment your child is likely headed into the next time you’re asked to fork over boatloads of cash for their education.
